In an effort to help shape its national image, and maybe influence the people who run the college football playoff, Texas Tech hired a Dallas-based PR firm to spread the word about the school.
Typically that goal would be met with mockery, ridicule and scorn in places like Austin, Fort Worth, College Station, Waco, and Houston. When you aren’t Ohio State, Texas, Alabama and a few others, and you’re in the Big 12, you need to explore all avenues to sell yourself.
Unbeknownst to a lot of people outside of Lubbock and the Red Raider community, Tech has real money. Amazing what the Barnett Shale can do. It has boosters who want to spend it.
The man in the middle of the spending, hope and expectations is well aware of all of these details, and goals. One year ago this week, Texas Tech dropped to 3-5 and head coach Joey McGuire was driving home after practice when he called his wife, Debbie.
“Joey, you need to start winning some games,” she told her husband.
“I know that,” he said.
“I’m serious,” Debbie said. “I love this place. I want to be here.”
McGuire and Texas Tech come to Fort Worth this week to play TCU in one of those games that feels like a coin flip off the high dive. For either team this could be a belly flop into an empty pool, or a perfect 10 with no splash.
According to the Tech people, McGuire has the complete support of the university to clean up what his predecessor, Matt Wells, left him. Texas Tech was not broken when it hired McGuire, but it didn’t have much.
McGuire has major assets to work with, starting with the complete alignment from the board, major boosters, and himself. In major college athletics, that’s the holy trinity. The goal is to sell Texas Tech. It’s the same goal at Kansas State, Texas A&M, Alabama or other schools that are located in towns that would not be at the top of the list for a travel agent.
After so many painful misses on previous coaching hires, McGuire does feel like the right pick to make what Mike Leach proved what is possible at Texas Tech happen again.
“I 100 percent can feel the hunger of this fan base. They want to succeed no matter who (is head coach),” McGuire said in an interview earlier this year at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock. “They understand I am a Texan, and that I love this place. I am very passionate about Texas Tech.
“They see that, and they see I am genuine and they want to see me succeed. Put that aside, they want to win in football.”
Hard stop. If the head coach was from Mercury, Moscow, or even Waco, and the Red Raiders won 11 games, the Techies would find a way to deal with it.
The Red Raiders are 20-13 under McGuire, and on pace to have a third straight winning season for the first time since 2008 to 2010; those were the last two years under Leach, and the first with Senator Tommy Tuberville .
It helps immeasurably that unlike some of the previous coaches who had this job, McGuire “gets” Lubbock. Lubbock is your typical college town where the university is the epicenter of the community. The same as Manhattan, Kan., College Station, Columbia, Mo., Tuscaloosa, Ala. and most certainly South Bend, Ind.
You’ll notice none of those college towns are exactly tourist traps, but the main schools located in them are of interest.
Lubbock is also an atypical college town because its epicenter is so far removed from the rest of America.
Whether you’re a student, a student athlete, a coach, or a middle aged person going to work, you have to understand and embrace the distance that comes with Lubbock. It’s not for everyone. It’s not for no one.
That’s why Tech hired a PR firm.
“Look at what we did with our facility, a $240 million upgrade,” McGuire said. “That’s not happening everywhere else. “Walking through (the stadium), you can feel the pressure, but I do think you want that. You want that because you know you are somewhere where it means something. If you are at a place where you don’t feel that, where there is no pressure, how bad do you really want to win?
“Tech has put their money where their mouth is. We need to go win. We have an opportunity in the Big 12 to make ourselves an important program.”
Other than when Patrick Mahomes was destroying scoreboards under coach Kliff Kingsbury, Tech has not been an important program since Leach was the head coach. Even when Mahomes was a Red Raider, his defense was so atrocious the program missed the opportunity.
Since Leach left, Tech has been a “mid” program. At best. It’s had one nine-win season since 2008. The last time the team finished ranked in the final AP Top 25 poll was 2009, the year Leach was fired.
Since that time other Red Raider programs have flourished on a national level. Despite the distance, it can be done.
The Big 12 is there to be had. There is a real chance for Tech football to be a relevant, and important, program again.
A PR firm can help, but nothing sells a school like Texas Tech more than a winning football team.
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